Robust Switching Control Strategy for a Transmission System with Unknown Backlash

This paper proposes a robust switching control strategy for a transmission system with unknown backlash. Firstly, the adverse effects of backlash nonlinearity in the transmission system are analyzed. Then the backlash model and different operating modes of the transmission system with backlash are investigated. For each operating mode, an individual controller is designed to make the system robust against the unknown backlash and various frequencies of the input signal. Moreover, a supervisory controller is proposed to estimate the current mode of the transmission system and coordinate the controller switching between different modes. Simulations are done to verify that our switching control strategy can efficiently reduce the oscillation caused by backlash and is quite robust against the variation of the frequency of the input signal.